Flowers and Blood Describe My Love
by I'mBadAtThingsILike
Summary: Hanahaki disease AU where the sickness is directly linked to your psychology. The disease doesn't kick in until you are: #1: Aware and accepting of the fact that you are in love with someone. #2: Absolutely sure that you don't have a chance with them John isn't known for his confidence in making someone fall in love with him.


Hanahaki disease AU where the sickness is directly linked to your psychology. The disease doesn't kick in until you are:

#1: Aware and accepting of the fact that you are in love with someone.

#2: Absolutely sure that you don't have a chance with them

The thing is that you're brain wires the fact that the person you are in love with (not a crush, actual love) will never be with you and decides to self destruct rather than live. In the case that you are in love but think you have a chance with them, the flowers will not grow because your mind revels in that tiny spark of hope as a chance. So in the end, it all depends on where your mind goes.

John isn't known for his confidence in making someone fall in love with him.

* * *

 **Chapter 1**

 _(AN: Time to attempt to write in a new style! All medical knowledge is completely bullshitted and written without reference. (All flower knowledge comes from two websites I can't list because Fanfiction censors it but feel free to check out the Tumblr or AO3 mirror to this.)_

It's a Sunday afternoon when you cough up the first petal, or rather, first wad of petals. Your throat had been scratching for a couple of days, but you refused to acknowledge it, hoping if you pretended it wasn't there, it would go away. Now, holding the bloody clump of petals in your hand with no knowledge of what to do with them, you realize how dumb the plan was in retrospect. No seriously, who does that? You and your stupid dumb brain, you should have just gone to the doctor. Now it was too late.

Tossing the petals into the trash, you head to the bathroom and wash the blood off your hands and rinse your mouth. Yellow roses, stained red with blood. Could it be any more symbolic? Spitting out some reddish water, you decide no, it couldn't. Here's to the hope that you won't become a flower shop in school tomorrow.

Maybe you offended the universe on some personal level, because the world goes "Fuck you, John Egbert" and you become a bouquet of symbolic flowers the next day.

The day starts off relatively well, the events of the previous day but a distant memory. Your throat feels a bit sore (swallowing becomes a chore, any movement striking against the back of your throat.), so you make some tea and pour it into a thermos, heading to school. Your bag is heavy; the teachers at this school see weekends as more time for homework instead of time off from school.

"'Sup?" Someone pats you lightly and you stumble a bit, catching your toe on a crack in the pavement. "Woah, sorry dude."

"Hey," you reply, giving them a quick smile to show all is forgiven.

"What's wrong with your voice?" They ask, and you cough lightly and lie.

"Sore throat." It's easy to fake, your throat is pretty scratchy, and you take a sip of your tea to calm it down.

"Shouldn't you stay home so it doesn't become worse?" The tone is flippant, but there's a bit of underlying worry.

"You of all people should know how easy it is for homework to pile up, Dave," you joke, avoiding his gaze. "It's really not that bad, anyway."

He laughs a little and agrees. "True."

You walk to school together, him sauntering but refusing to call it that, and you looking down at your shoes and plodding besides him. Once you reach the gates, you part; though you have most classes together, you're separated for first period.

"See ya later," Dave salutes to you lazily with his dumb two fingers tapping the side of his forehead, which you know he picked up by accident from Pokémon but wouldn't admit it.

You grin at him and chirp "Later!" And run towards someone you share your first class with.

"Heya Teresa!" You beam, and she smiles back, and you walk to class together in silence. Even though you know a lot of people at school, you're not really friends with them. There are only a few people you talked to on the daily.

It's not like you are bullied or ignored, just unnoticed. People have their cliques and you didn't want to join them. You have your friends, and a handful of people you talked to every now and then. You're happy, satisfied, at least, with your high school life.

The day passes in a blur and you're pretty sure someone named Kurt asks you to copy notes in Social Studies and you let him. Everything seems to be going fine, and the teachers take your sore throat excuse without looking twice.

And then everything went to shit.

It was English, which was bad as is. The teacher was someone who was more likely to be a hit man or mass murderer than a high school English teacher, with a rumor that he once stabbed a man seconds after meeting them. Your throat is itchy, and you're resisting the urge to heave until class is over because Mr. Slick is a dick who doesn't let kids go to the bathroom. People go up for their presentation, and you barely absorb a single fact until someone is calling to you.

"—n Egbert," cuts through your muddled mind.

"Hmm?" You mumble, tongue thick in your mouth.

"Get your ass over here and give your essay," he sneers, because Mr. Slick isn't one of those fake teacher whose faces are pinched as they simper. "Mr. Egbert, if you'd be so kind to come up and give your presentation?". You can appreciate the brutal honesty sometimes.

You sluggishly move out of your desk, you feel like you can't breathe and your head feels light. You swallow thickly and give Dave a cheery thumbs up from where he's shooting you a worried look. Every breath is short of oxygen, and your nose and throat tingle and vibrate.

You hold the papers in front of you, the words swimming and dipping, blurring and waving. You open your mouth to read the title, which you had already memorized. But as soon as you do, the cough claws out and you violently buck forward, knees bending slightly as your elbows dig into your stomach. Your eyes water as you spew blood and petals all over your paper, and you distantly wonder if Mr. Slick would let you redo your presentation.

There's so many petals and you hear shocked silence throughout the room, the only sounds are your dry heaves as you desperately suck in deep breaths of air before your lungs clog again. You turn to your teacher and he's looking the most shocked you've ever seen him, so you give him a bloody apologetic grin and croak "Sorry" before your knees let out and you fall to the floor.

Everything seems muffled as the first scream breaks out, and you can see the legs of the chairs and desk focus and unfocused in your vision before you let your eyes slip close. You can hear Dave worriedly call out to you, and want to reassure him you're fine. You want to stop him when you hear him fighting with the teacher, because he's always been easily angered when it comes to his friends. You want to stop him, but you're tired, so so so tired. You want to sleep for a million years. You feel people hauling you up, and you finally slip into unconsciousness.

You wake up in the infirmary to the sound of Dave telling the nurse that he'd be out as soon as he knows you're okay. He sits down in a chair pulled up to your bed, and for a second, you just lay there with your eyes closed, breathing through your nose softly as you revel the feelings of your throat being cleared.

"I know you're awake, John," Dave whispers, resigned. It sounds like you took years off of his life, and for a while, you feel bad.

You open your eyes, and he's staring at you, twirling a wet stalk between his fingers. Droplets fly off the bunch of flowers and he spins it faster and faster, before abruptly stopping, making them shake with inertia.

"A purple lilac," He monotones. "The first emotions of love."

He breathes in deeply for a second, and slowly pulls off his shades. You widen your eyes in surprise, he's only willingly done it in front of you a handful of times, most of which you can recall off the top of your head. He places the stalk gently on the bed sheets, the wet spots of the droplets still on it spreading and darkening the white linen. You realize that it was one of the things you coughed up, and he probably washed it to give it to you.

You raise your eyes back to him, and his expression is holding so much hurt. You feel like a terrible best friend because you did this to him, he thinks you don't trust him but you do, you trust him with your whole life and things beyond and—

"Who is she, John?" He questions, oh so softly, and you feel your heart break into a million pieces.

'Who is she?', he asked, because he saw the flower and assumed you went and fell in love with another girl like you do every week. Except this time it's not a crush, you fell in love with her.

'Who is she?', not 'Who are they?' Because you've dug yourself a trench of heteronormacy due to the fact that you've only confessed of female crushes.

So how could you tell him that the only reason that you were coughing up purple lilacs wasn't because you just fell in love, but because you only just realized it was love? That you've been in love with them for forever and ever, but never realized it? How could you tell him that when he was so clearly out of reach?

You're watching him in the bright fluorescent light of the room, the hard bed under your back, Dave's hair is messy like he's been running his hands through it, worried for his best friend. With his eyes sparkling with emotions you can pick out easily now they there weren't tinted glasses in the way. Concern; he was always worried for you. Sadness; well, you are pretty pitiful. And…

Determination; to make sure that the "girl" you've fallen in love with will not remain anonymous. With all of that in mind; with the fact that you know he cares for you, how could you tell him that the disease plaguing you was actually for him?

So you mumble the name of the most popular girl in class, knowing that she'd never love you so it's the perfect ruse. Knowing that you put up the guise of the sort of person who would fall in love with her and then develop the disease because you know you can't get with her. And you know that that's exactly what Dave's thinking, because without his glasses and his walls down, his eyes are so much more expressive, and you know you've dug your own grave.

But it's okay, because Dave is beside you. And with him beside you, everything else falls away, and you can pretend everything is alright.

* * *

 _*Yellow roses: Friendship_

 _*Red roses: Romance_

 _(The yellow roses tinged red with blood, friendship turning into romance)_


End file.
